1. The Modern Age
Michael Ferrazzo
V ALS

2. Summary Historical Context (1890-1930) Important Works Anthropology
Old and New Novel

3. Historical Context
1890: Beginning of global successful modernization (France, Germany, Japan and the United States) → international competition for raw material markets and the control of trade routes → Global conflicts
1914: Beginning of the First World War
1917: Lenin and the Bolshevik party took control of the Russian state in the name of the Russian working class
1918: End of the First World War

4. Historical Context Consequences:
The only sure point of reference that any individual had was himself, either in a limited personal relationship with God or alone. It was for him to decide what was right and wrong and to act accordingly.
Doubt and insecurity;
Sense of isolation.
There was no set of values, either social or personal.

5. Historical Context
Morality, social philosophy and the basis of traditional science had become relative:
German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (1906);
French philosopher, Henri-Louis Bergson’s Theory of Duration and Time (1922);
Viennese Psychologist, Sigmund Freud’s Discovery of the Unconscious Part of the Mind (1900)

6. Important Works S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
C. Jung, The Psychology of the Unconscious (1916)
Albert Einstein, The General Theory of Relativity (1906)
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889)

7. Anthropology A new interest in mythology and pre-history arose;
Theories of Darwin → Symbolist Movement: sources of art lay in the “unconscious”, a collective as well as a personal one;
J. Fraser, The Golden Bough: the man beneath the surface of so-called “civilization” is the core of Fraser’s research.

8. Old and New Novel Old Novel: New Novel: Narrative structure;
Omniscient narrator (who alternates summaries of previous events, personal commentaries, scenes, characters’ description, conclusions, etc.);
The protagonist speaks with the same voice of the author.
New Novel:
The narrator is invisible;
The story is self-told;
The analysis is transferred from the novel to the reader: he is called to discover the overall meaning.
The reader is the key to read the novel: the reader must not only reconstruct the characters, but discover his identity.

9. Old and New Novel
T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound: a new poetry which reflected the cold, mechanical reality of the modern world.
T. S. Eliot
Myth and ritual as a potential means of ordering and transforming into significance contemporary experience;
Technical function more important than the symbolic meaning;
successful artistic creation needs a balance between form and matter (objective correlative).